Last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that it would no longer report veterans who were assigned a fiduciary to manage their VA benefits to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The VA described the move — which will make it easier for veterans at risk of harming themselves or others to pass a background check and obtain firearms — as correcting a “decades-old wrong” and protecting the Second Amendment rights of veterans.
In announcing the reversal, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins characterized the VA’s former policy as an “injustice” that impacted veterans who “struggle with managing their finances.” The VA also stated that it is “working with the FBI to remove all past VA reporting from NICS.” But the agency’s announcement leaves unanswered questions about how the change will affect suicide prevention efforts among a population that faces disproportionately high firearm suicide rates.
As discussed below, gun groups like Gun Owners of America and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, were quick to issue statements applauding the rollback, one of many related to guns during President Trump’s second term.
Fiduciaries and NICS Reporting
Collins’ comments require additional context. Under VA policies, the agency may determine that a veteran is “mentally incompetent” when awarding benefits. The term does not refer to a criminal finding, but to a determination that an individual lacks the mental capacity to manage their own financial affairs because of injury or illness. Those underlying conditions can include serious mental health disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, as well as cognitive impairments tied to traumatic brain injuries or other service-connected disabilities. When the VA makes a mental incompetency determination, it may appoint a fiduciary to help manage the individual’s benefits and financial responsibilities.
In 1993, Congress created NICS through the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to prevent “prohibited persons” from purchasing firearms from federally licensed dealers. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, that category includes any person “adjudicated as a mental defective.” The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has defined that term to include those who “lack the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs” due to illness, disease, or incompetency.
For years, the VA treated its own “mental incompetency” determinations as falling within the regulatory definition Congress established. In practice, that determination meant that once the agency concluded a veteran lacked the capacity to manage financial affairs because of injury or illness, the VA would submit that individual’s name to NICS, effectively prohibiting them from purchasing firearms.
Gun Groups Applaud the VA Announcement
The VA now claims that fiduciary determinations do not satisfy the statutory requirement of being “adjudicated” because they are not issued by a court or judge. The gun lobby has long criticised this policy, arguing that veterans were losing gun rights without formal due process protections.
Following the reversal, Gun Owners of America, a far-right gun group that opposes all gun laws and counts many gun companies as “partners,” said that an “injustice” is “finally being corrected” and touted its work “to make this a reality.” The National Rifle Association offered similar remarks.
The NSSF quickly praised the VA’s decision, arguing that the former policy was “extrajudicial” and had “unduly robbed veterans” through “bureaucratic fiat.” NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel Larry Keane also thanked the Trump administration for “upholding its promise to protect Second Amendment rights and the industry that makes those rights possible.”
Notably absent from the NSSF’s statement was the impact this reversal could have on the already extraordinarily high suicide rate among veterans — something the organization claims to care about. The NSSF’s comments also undercut its purported efforts to “strengthen the background check system” as part of the “FixNICS” campaign, which states that a “background check is only as good as the records in the database.”
Mass Shootings Tied to Missing NICS Records
Missing NICS records have led to dire consequences. In 2007, following the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, investigators discovered that the gunman had previously been adjudicated by a court as a danger to himself, but that record was never properly transmitted to NICS. In response, Congress passed the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 to require better reporting to NICS of mental health and other prohibiting records by federal and state agencies.
A decade later, after the shooting at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in 2017, another reporting failure was revealed. The gunman had previously been convicted by a military court of domestic violence — a prohibiting offense under federal law — but the U.S. Air Force failed to enter the conviction into the federal background check system. Congress again acted, passing the Fix NICS Act in 2018 to improve federal agency reporting to NICS.
The VA’s long-standing practice of reporting fiduciary-based “mental incompetency” determinations existed within that broader congressional mandate, which ensures agencies transmit records that could trigger firearm prohibitions under federal law. By reversing its own policy, the VA is stepping back from a reporting practice that Congress has historically pressed agencies to carry out.
Suicide Risks Left Out of Conversation
Veteran suicide remains a persistent crisis. In 2022, 6,407 veterans died by suicide, and more than 73 percent were by firearm, the highest proportion in 20 years. The VA has even described firearms as “the most lethal means of suicide.” Nearly a quarter of those who died had been diagnosed by the VA with a mental health or substance use disorder within the previous two years.
As mentioned, the VA has indicated that it will work to have the previous records reported to NICS deleted from the system. Of the 205,686 total active entries for individuals who had been “adjudicated as a mental defective” in the NICS indices that had been submitted by federal agencies through 2024, 199,454 (or 96.97 percent) were reported to NICS by the VA.
The VA’s announcement does not address whether it analyzed suicide outcomes tied to fiduciary-based reporting before reversing course. Nor does it outline any alternative safeguards for veterans who are determined to be unable to manage financial affairs due to serious mental illness or cognitive impairment. Finally, it’s unclear how this change fits within broader veteran suicide prevention strategies, including secure firearm storage initiatives, temporary transfer options, or coordination with state-level extreme risk protection order laws.